Polishes are used to produce or restore a glossy finish on various surfaces as well as prolong the useful lives of those surfaces. The appearance enhancement provided by polishes generally results from the presence in the polish of components that leave a glossy coating, and/or materials that smooth and clean surfaces. Floor, furniture, and shoe polishes rely on the deposition of a film. Applications of car-polish formulae leave glossy and protective films and contain abrasives to remove weathered paint and soils. Metal polishes are based on either abrasive smoothing and cleaning or tarnish-removing chemicals, and they sometimes deposit materials that retard future tarnishing.
Aqueous self-polishing, polymeric floor polishes contain two or three polymeric film formers, coalescents, leveling aids, plasticizers, zinc complexes, ammonia, and wetting and emulsifying agents. An aqueous formula may contain 0-12 weight percent polymer, 0-12 weight percent resin, 0-6 weight percent wax, 0.3-1.5 weight percent tri(butoxyethyl)phosphate, 1-6 weight percent glycol ether, 0-1 weight percent zinc with the remainder being water.
Much of the automobile-polish market is represented by one-step products. One-step products generally contain four functional ingredients: abrasives, straight- and branched-chain aliphatic hydrocarbons, waxes, and silicones. A representative liquid emulsion product might contain 10-15 weight percent abrasive, 10-30 weight percent solvent, 2-12 weight percent silicone, and 0-4 weight percent wax; an emulsion paste product might contain 3-15 weight percent wax and similar amounts of other ingredients.
Formulated metal polishes consist of fine abrasives similar to those involved in industrial buffing operations, i.e., pumice and tripoli. Other ingredients include surfactants, chelating agents and solvents.
Many modern polishes contain inhibitors to prevent oxidation and tarnishing. Metal polishes may contain emulsifiers and thickeners for control of consistency and stabilization of abrasive suspension, and the product form can be solid, paste, or liquid. A representative liquid emulsion product may contain 8-25 weight percent abrasive, 2-6 weight percent surfactant, 0-5 weight percent chelating agents, 0-25 weight percent solvent, and the remainder water. The abrasive content in an emulsion paste product is typically greater than in a solvent product.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,138,228 discloses an article for polishing comprising a polymeric matrix having adhered thereto a polishing abrasive of average particle size less than 10 microns. The polishing abrasives that are disclosed as being useful are rare earth oxides and metallic oxides and the reference specifically identifies cerium oxide, zirconium oxide, alumina, ferric oxide (rough), tin oxide, colloidal silica, chromium oxide, jewelers rouge, pumice and quartz flour. The reference indicates that the article is useful in polishing glass, plastic, metal, ceramic and semiconductor materials, metallurgical and geological specimens, quartz, semiprecious stones and piezo-electric crystals.
It would be advantageous to provide a water-based polish that could be used on any nonporous surface (e.g., glass, plastic, metal, painted surfaces, waxed surfaces, marble, ceramic, soft-precious and semiprecious stones, semi-conductor materials, metallurgical and geological speciments, quartz, etc.). It would be particularly advantageous if the electrical conductivity of this water-based polish was sufficiently reduced to the point where it could be applied using an electrically powered applicator without risk of injury to the user due to electrical shock.